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VOTE HERE FOR YOUR PREFERRED FREEPER Q THREAD MEMBER MEETUP LOCATION BY AUGUST 31, 2020

This old thread will serve to house the votes for our Freeper Q thread members’ preferred meetup votes for an in-person meet up next year. Dates will be voted on later.

Per consultation with RN, it was recommended I pick an old thread to house the votes so as to not clutter up the current thread or the most recent Festival thread people may still be trying to get through.

This thread was chosen because it is the oldest one using our current format. Hopefully it will be allowed to remain active for our present purposes.

Rules:

1) You have until August 31, 2020 to vote for your choice of city for this meet up.

2) I personally think the city should be one in the middle of the country, but that is up to you.

3) Per the contribution to a thread I made a couple months ago on this topic, some of the suggestions were Rapid City, SD, Chicago vicinity, St. Louis vicinity, and Mammoth Cave area of KY, but you are not limited to any of these areas.

4) We will vote for dates in September.

5) You can explain your reason for your pick or just list the city without explanation.

6) Only one vote per person. No changes may be made later. Your first vote is the one that will be counted.

7) The votes of known trolls will be excluded (if necessary in a close count). Troll votes will be determined by a committee of five of the most established and respected thread members who are good troll sniffers.

8) You must have posted as least three non-troll posts for your vote to count, even if the posts are just saying you are “in.”

9) Someone will post reminders about this vote on each of our new threads that are started in August 2020.

10) So as to not make this a ridiculously long and laborious thread, please limit your posts to just your one and only post in which you name the city you prefer the meet up to take place in. Your choice should simply be your personal preference, no matter what your reason is. Please limit your reasons to the same post in which you post your chosen city/area, if you even want to give a reason.

11) In the event of a tie, there will be a 3-day period in which people will get to vote among the tying cities.

1. Mt. Rushmore garnered 11 votes. Runners up were Branson with 5 votes and St. Louis with 4 votes. So Mt. Rushmore wins out.

2. The next vote, to be held during the entire month of September, is for the date. Deadline for voting is midnight PST 9.30.20.

3. The candidate weekends are: May 22-23; June 12-13; and July 24-25. Vote for ONE date. If all of these dates would work for you, vote for the one that you like best for whatever reason.

4. We are selecting the dates by the end of September so that people can start booking rooms in October. Rates will only increase as time goes on.

5. By voting for a date, you are not committing to attending the meet-up. You are merely indicating your strong interest in making a good faith attempt to attend and are selecting the date that you think would work best for you given what you know now. Of course, life throws us curve balls.

6. Everyone is responsible for booking his or her own accommodations in Rapid City, Keystone, Sturgis, or Deadwood. There will be no attempt made to book as a Q group for security reasons. I strongly encourage everyone to book refundable reservations in early October to secure a good rate. Most hotel chains will allow you to cancel reservations up to three days before the first night of your scheduled stay.

7. Everyone is responsible for arranging his or her own transportation. If someone wants to rent a cargo van to pick up people from the same hotel or hotels on the same strip and drive them to the meet-up venue, that is on you. But everyone must figure out flights to Rapid City, taxi or car rental, etc. on his or her own. I presume a lot of people, myself included, are just going to drive.

8. My thinking thus far is that we will rent something like an American Legion hall or Eagles lodge for the weekend to get some money in their pocket and to keep costs down. At some point, it will be necessary to get some firm commitments from people and contributions toward venue rental and catering, but I am hoping this can wait until January or so. I think it is more important that people put the dates on their personal calendar and book refundable lodging and flights. If one of you belongs to an AL, Eagles, etc., and wants to call the local affiliates in and around Mt. Rushmore and make inquiries, please feel free. I am open to other suggestions. I think Defcon and or someone else lives in the area, so if he or she has other ideas or connections of some kind, let him or her come forward with them. Also- if said person or persons has some recommendations of where to stay or not stay, please recommend away. Perhaps the Econo Lodge in Sturgis is really nice.

9. Everyone who has posted, prior to today, three non-troll-like posts to a FR Q thread is eligible to vote for the date, even if you did not vote for the location. If you have a sincere interest in attending the meet-up and think there is a glimmer of a chance that come next year you will be able and want to attend, vote for the date that you think would work out best for you. Remember: you can always cancel your hotel reservations the week of the event.

10. In the event of a tie, a second vote will take place among the tieing dates, the deadline of which to vote will be 10.8.20.

11. I encourage you all to give some serious thought to attending this meet-up. Many of us could not take a vacation this year due to the lock downs, so look upon this as your chance to make up for it next year. Speaking personally, even though I did vote for SD myself, compared to St. Louis, Branson, KY, and some other places, the drive to SD is going to take me two full days versus the one day it would take for me to get to these other places. I am planning on taking about two weeks off and making the most of it by staying a couple nights in some other places along the way and driving one route going to SD and a different one driving back. After this year, I could really use a grand vacation.

12. We will hold off until January or so to discuss an agenda for the meet-up since we don’t know what the world will look like then. My vision is that it is a mix of casualness with a few scheduled sessions during which someone might present on something like the history of the FR Q thread, advanced posting/html, etc. We could maybe have a barbecue, perhaps a somewhat formal dinner at a nearby restaurant on Saturday night, dart competition, etc., family afternoon, etc. I call dibs on the first session, which will entail icebreakers, introductions, and a cool guessing game in which we guess who each of us is.